n a tiny hamlet in Upstate New York, petroleum leaking from underground storage tanks has so contaminated the water supply that a man taking a shower suffers severe burns. Nearly all the hamlet’s wells are polluted. Residents don’t dare use the water that flows from their faucets. The state supplies the town with bottled water, but only until a permanent solution can be implemented.

Costly and complex environmental problems can seem insurmountable to people in sparsely populated, rural communities. Fortunately, small towns can turn to one of the nine Environmental Finance Centers, based at universities around the country, for help in finding the financial resources to solve their water problems. Funded largely by the Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Finance Centers provide local governments with support in dealing with unfunded mandates and environmental improvements. They work with private, public, and nonprofit technical assistance providers, including the United States Department of Agriculture, and small communities to promote cooperation and networking connections among them.

In the case of the upstate hamlet, town officials contacted the Environmental Finance Center at Maxwell, housed in the School’s Executive Education program. The EFC, which was established in 1993, helps officials build public awareness and support for such improvements as centralized water and wastewater systems.

“We help the communities identify all angles of the problem,” says Kimberly J. Farrell, co-director of Maxwell’s EFC. “They know they have contaminated drinking water and part of the solution is to create a new water system. We want them to look at the bigger picture, to consider any plans for economic development or affordable housing that are underway. So when they do make that improvement, they build a system with the capacity to truly meet the need.”

Because many people in rural communities resist paying for water, the EFC sponsors public outreach forums, which present information about the cost of water compared with other expenses (such as cable television or Internet service). Paying for water is not always a welcome prospect, but “people in the communities see us as neutral brokers of information,” Farrell says.

Sampie Sutton, supervisor of another small upstate town, Alexandria, credits outreach forums held in his town with changing the minds of many residents. “The center has all the facts and figures, plus the experts to present the information,” he says. “It helps to defuse the situation.”

In addition to benefiting communities, the center has provided research opportunities for Maxwell students. More than 100 have worked with the EFC on special projects, interacting with government officials on all levels, according to Farrell. Stuart Bretschneider, professor of public administration, works with doctoral students to collect data on variations in water pricing and uses that data to investigate the different forces that affect water pricing. The statistics compiled by Bretschneider and the students have been presented at the public outreach forums and at seminars for public officials held at Syracuse University’s Minnowbrook Conference Center.

Sutton, a member of the Maxwell EFC’s advisory board, attended several of the Minnowbrook seminars and credits the financing lessons he learned there with helping him secure more than $6 million in funding for water projects in his town, including a high-tech fiber-optic method for reading water meters.

Maxwell’s small-community consulting program is a model for others across the country, according to David Miller, program director of rural utilities services/ com­munity facilities for the Department of Agriculture. “We’re developing capacity in rural communities—financial, technical, and managerial—so there is continuity,” he says. “Programs and personnel change so quickly in communities that it’s important to educate people about what kinds of funding assistance is available. [Maxwell] has helped us to vastly improve communication.”

-Paula Meseroll

This article appeared in the Spring 2004 print edition of Maxwell Perspective; © 2004 Maxwell School of Syracuse University. To request a copy, e-mail dlcooke@maxwell.syr.edu.